Modernity, postmodernity, and the future of “identity”: Implications for educators

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Struggling Adolescent Writers Describe Their Writing Experience: A Descriptive Case Study

Four adolescents identified as struggling writers in an English language arts classroom were interviewed about their perceptions of a writing task--how they judged their capability to succeed, how they ranked their passion, persistence, and confidence about writing, and how they responded to classroom activity. Student perceptions of self-efficacy and the related self-beliefs of motivation and interest as well as self-regulation were stated and implied as students described a planning worksheet, instructional scaffolding, peer interactions, and ownership of their writing. Wersch\u27s view of mediated action and Engestrom\u27s model of activity systems were the lens through which the students\u27 descriptions were analyzed. Findings suggested surprisingly high self-efficacy despite low interest, contrasting attitudes between both school writing and their out-of-school writing, and the possibility that students labeled as struggling writers by their teachers may not see themselves as struggling

“Helping Me Learn New Things Every Day”: The Power of Community College Students’ Writing Across Genres

Although community colleges are important entry points into higher education for many American students, few studies have investigated how their students engage with different genres or develop genre knowledge. Even fewer have connected students’ genre knowledge to their academic performance. In the present article, 104 ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students reported on classroom genre experiences and wrote stories about college across three narrative genres (Letters, Best Experience, Worst Experience). Findings suggest that students’ engagement with classroom genres in community college helped them develop rhetorical reading and writing skills. When students wrote about their college lives across narrative genres, they reflected on higher education in varied ways to achieve differing sociocultural goals with distinct audiences. Finally, students’ experience with classroom and narrative genres predicted their GPA, implying that students’ genre knowledge signals and influences their academic success. These findings demonstrate how diverse students attending community college can use genres as tools to further their social and academic development

Going Public: What Writing Programs Learn from Engagement

An important new resource for WPA preparation courses. In Going Public, Rose and Weiser moderate a discussion of the role of the writing program vis-a-vis the engagement movement, the service learning movement, and the current interest in public discourse/civic rhetoric among scholars of rhetoric and composition. While there have been a number of publications describing service-learning and community leadership programs, most of these focus on curricular elements and address administrative issues primarily from a curricular perspective. The emphasis of Going Public is on the ways that engagement-focused programs change conceptions of WPA identity. Writing programs are typically situated at points where students make the transition from community to college or from college to community, and are already dedicated to developing literacies that are critically needed in communities. As institutions begin to include more explicit engagement with citizen and stakeholder groups as an element of their mission, writing program administrators find themselves with an opportunity to articulate ways in which writing program goals and purposes can significantly contribute to achieving these new institutional goals.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1027/thumbnail.jp

Strategic Error as Style: Finessing the Grammar Checker

Composition studies lacks a comprehensive theory of error, one which successfully defines error in writing and offers a pedagogical response to ostensible errors that neither ignores nor pathologizes them. Electronic text-critiquing technologies offer some promise of helping writers notice and correct errors, but they are under-researched in composition and rarely well-integrated into pedagogical praxis. This research on the grammar and style checker in Microsoft Word considers the program as an electronic checklist for making decisions about what counts as an error in a given rhetorical situation. This study also offers a theory of error grounded in the idea of attention, or cognitive load, some of which an electronic checker can relieve in its areas of its greatest effectiveness, which this research quantifies. The proposed theory of error forms the basis for a pedagogy of register, understood as typified style, and establishes that error itself can be a strategic style move

Why Current Affairs Needs Social Theory

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Television news is frequently disparaged by thoughtful commentators for its preoccupation with drama and spectacle at the expense of serious, in-depth, engagement with the critical issues it covers. Whilst insisting these charges possess more than a small dose of truth, Rob Stones argues for more emphasis to be placed on strengthening the capacities of audiences. Drawing from major traditions in social thought, and on academic media analysis, Stones provides the conceptual tools for audiences to bring greater sophistication to their interpretations, developing their capacity to think across items and genres. A detailed account of an episode of the Danish political drama, Borgen, reveals the extent to which its viewers already deploy similar concepts and skills in order to follow its storylines. Stones shows how audiences can refine these skills further and demonstrates their value with respect to a wide range of current affairs texts, including: Israeli settlers on the West Bank; the Rwandan genocide; the Egyptian ‘revolution’; the Obama administration’s immigration reform bill; the bases of Germany’s economic success; the conflict between ‘red shirts’ and ‘yellow shirts’ in Thailand; China’s diplomatic relations with Burma; and scandals of mistreatment within the UK and Swedish healthcare systems. The book shows that everyone’s understanding of current affairs can be significantly enhanced by social theory. It will be relevant to students of sociology, politics, media studies and journalism at all levels

Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies

This open access book covers the main issues, challenges and techniques concerning the application of qualitative methodologies to the study of migration. It discusses theoretical, epistemological and empirical questions that must be considered before, during, and after undertaking qualitative research in migration studies. It also covers recent innovative developments and addresses the key issues and major challenges that qualitative migration research may face at different stages i.e. crafting the research questions, defining approaches, developing concepts and theoretical frameworks, mapping categories, selecting cases, dealing with concerns of self-reflection, collecting and processing empirical evidence through various techniques, including visual data, dealing with ethical issues, and developing policy-research dialogues. Each chapter discusses relative strengths and limitations of qualitative research. The chapters also identify the main drivers for qualitative research development in migration studies. It is a unique volume as it brings together a multidisciplinary perspective as well as illustrations of different issues derived from the research experience of the recognized authors. One additional value of this book is its geographic focus on Europe. It seeks to explore theoretical and methodological issues that are raised by distinctive features of the European context. This volume will be a useful reference source for scholars and professionals in migration studies and in social sciences as well. The publication is also addressed to graduate and post-graduate students and, more generally, to those who embark on the task of doing qualitative research for the first time in the field of migration

Collective Management in a Cooperative: Problematizing Productivity and Power

Since the mid-twentieth century, the structure of the workplace has undergone a transformation. While the conventional firm with its rigid bureaucracies is still in use, many businesses have grown increasingly flexible, flat, and polycentric: “empowerment” and “innovation” are the coin of the realm. As the way we work changed, professional communication scholarship pivoted to consider communication practices in these structures. While professional communication scholars have long discussed these kinds of organizations, they have not discussed an increasingly popular alternative: cooperatives. Owned and operated by the people who use them, these organizations can significantly affect the communities in which they operate. To contribute to the rhetorical knowledge of cooperatives, I conducted a qualitative study at the Riverwest Public House Cooperative (“Public House”). This project extends research of flat organizations by investigating a cooperative business. I draw my research questions from the concerns scholars identified in other kinds of organizations: namely, the role of genres in configuring power and facilitating organizational change (Clark 2006; Devitt 1991; Spinuzzi 2007; Star 1991; Winsor 2003; Zachry 2000). 1. How does a cooperative employ genres differently? 2. What do these texts tell us about how power is distributed in a cooperative? 3. How do the genres it employs affect organizational change? These questions helped me better understand the connections between negotiations of power and texts at work in this particular business, leading me to several findings: 1. Genres. Collaboratively produced texts are the backbone of consensus-based decision-making. Unlike conventional organizations, in a cooperative, many (though not all) stakeholders are given access to governance. For instance, documents like an incident report or safer space policy have greater social significance when they are not only produced by agreement but also enforced through agreement. 2. Organizational Change. The Public House underwent a managerial overhaul during my study. Like conventional businesses, change occurred through a confluence of material circumstances and individual and organizational goals; however, due to the absence of formal structure, in this instance, a broader range of individuals was able to institute structural change. 3. Distribution of Power. In place of hierarchy, rhetorics of empowerment and democracy were deployed horizontally to task employees with managerial duties without financial rewards. For this project, I provide an interdisciplinary take on hierarchy and organizational structure by examining one cooperative, still in its infancy, through the lens of genre and power in the workplace

Third graders speak: Experiences and perspectives of reading and writing in urban public schools

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences and perspectives of reading and writing among third grade students attending urban public schools. The study took place in a large urban district in the Northeastern United States and included two elementary schools, four classrooms, and 24 students. The study was designed and conducted as qualitative research. 24 students were interviewed at two different times in the school year using (1) a picture protocol for the first interview and (2) a semi-structured interview protocol for the second interview. Analysis of the 48 interviews yielded findings in three areas: (1) The role of choice in motivating and engaging readers and writers; (2) The importance of a working relationship between a teacher and student in the classroom; and (3) The distribution of reading levels in urban classrooms compared to those in middle-to-upper class public classrooms. The results confirmed the centrality of the student-teacher relationship. These findings have implications for effective teaching practices that include the ways in which the teacher organizes and arranges for instruction to meet the broad needs of students

Before the aftermath: a pedagogy for disaster responsiveness

Before the Aftermath: A Pedagogy for Disaster Responsiveness examines how teachers of writing at the college level can respond to social, natural, or political disasters that interrupt their classes. As disaster becomes an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary life, teachers are encountering it in their work, and being forced to address these circumstances pedagogically. This project extends from that premise to explore what teachers who experience disaster do to address these disruptions, and to offer strategies of preparedness that can be deployed in teacher training efforts to better equip them to respond. From cases including the classroom responses of teachers to Hurricane Sandy in New York City in 2012, and the online circulation of strategies for response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, I demonstrate the complexities of choosing to address disruption, a task that requires teachers to attend to classroom emotions, to the stories of marginalized groups affected by the events, and to embrace the necessary failure of any pedagogical response to disaster. For scholars in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies, this project offers a critical vocabulary for understanding and engaging with unpredictable and often tragic circumstances of teaching by (1) theorizing disaster as a rhetorical situation of teaching and learning, and (2) offering concrete pedagogical strategies and orientations they can use in response. Ultimately, this project asks us to view teachers as a kind of “first responder” in their classrooms, and to view teaching in the wake of disaster as an ethical responsibility in an adversity-laden age